


come back and haunt me

by aliceinacoma



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, I’m sorry, Romance, for how totally dark this became
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 10,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24792763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliceinacoma/pseuds/aliceinacoma
Summary: "How long are you gonna stay with me?""Forever."--The Doctor leaves Rose Tyler on a beach in Norway for the second time, and that is the end of their story. But by now he should know that stories like this rarely have such clean endings.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Twelfth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 35
Kudos: 163





	1. rewind the tape back to the start

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on ff.net. Updated and moved here. More chapters to come!
> 
> I've also probably gone a little AU on Rose's jumping across universes, and tbh I don't really care.

Reluctantly, the Doctor takes Amy and Rory to the beach, as per the mad ginger's request. In his opinion, it's really a waste of time travel. Nothing good can ever come of visiting the beach, though, he supposes, he might be slightly biased there.

Nevertheless, they do visit the beach - Amy's favorite beach as a girl, just because the Doctor knows it will make her happy, and he likes to give her that - and as Amy and Rory walk along the edge of the ocean, the Doctor hangs back near the TARDIS, practically itching to hurry through this moment of domesticity - all right, well, this moment of something _adjacent_ to domesticity, not quite the Christmas and tea his last regeneration often found himself sucked into - and onto the next adventure. Where might he take Amy next? Some place with a view but less danger. Everything's been danger, recently, and they're all rather tired of it, even himself. 

He's so lost in his thoughts that he doesn't notice the girl launching herself straight into him until it's happened, knocking him flat on his bum. As it is he collapses next to the TARDIS, glaring up at his assailant. She quickly straightens, shaking back a mane of bright blonde hair and gazing down at him like a warrior, gun strapped to her back, clothes mussed. As his eyes adjust to the sun, his hearts stop. She takes him in, frowning in mild frustration but unaffected otherwise, as if she had been expecting him, as she she knows him, which is impossible. 

_Should be impossible,_ he corrects himself. Not like he hasn't been wrong before and often. 

"Doctor," she says, nodding at him, letting the barest smile curve the corner of her mouth.

"I," he falters. Rose laughs, a twinkling, beautiful sound, offering him a hand up; he doesn't take it, doesn't move - just stares at her, wondering if he's started hallucinating again. He used to have the most vivid memories of her, before he regenerated, but since meeting Amy, they've mostly stopped, one of the pros about this new body, he thinks. Only in his sleep do they haunt him, resolved easily enough by his refusal to sleep unless he _absolutely has to,_ and even then just an hour will suffice. Better tired than feeding what some might classify as an unhealthy obsession, after all.

Rose looks down at him curiously.

"Well, here's a sight I never thought I'd see: you, at a loss for words!"

The Doctor stands slowly, brushing off his pants and gazing into her deep brown eyes: they are as gentle as he remembers, as compassionate, as loving, as endless. Stepping back, he says cautiously, "You know who I am."

Rose cocks her head, and the Doctor steals himself against the rush of pain in his hearts; everything about her is too perfectly Rose to be real.

"Course I do. You - " Her eyes widen. "Oh. We've never - I mean. You don't...know."

"Know what?" Rose bites her lip, steps backward as if to walk away.

"I'm sorry. I - I shouldn't be here. I gotta - gotta go."

The Doctor rushes forward, grabbing her arm, and feels that familiar spark. (So - not a hallucination after all...)

"No. Wait," he says urgently. "Why are you here? How?"

"I'm sorry," says Rose, and the way she chews her bottom lips tells him she really is. She squeezes his hand gently once, lingering as she pulls herself away. Her eyes grow serious - more serious, more mature, with a quality that almost reminds him of himself, than he's ever seen in her - as she tells him, "I shouldn't be here. Y'know. Timelines and such."

Forcing a smile, she turns and treks back up the hill, and the Doctor lets her go, pushing away the impulse - no, he thinks, _need_ \- to make her stay. After all, she's learned from the best: if anyone knows anything about screwing with timelines, it's him.

And yet...

"Do I ever see you again?" he calls after her before she can disappear from his life - again - because he can't help himself; he could never help himself when it came to her. Rose turns back, grinning a little, the hope creeping back into her eyes.

"I don't think you'll ever be able to get rid of me!"

Then, quick as she appeared, she is gone. 


	2. haven't changed, I'm still the same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor runs into Rose for the second time.

The second time it happens - for him, anyway - he catches her out on the street, hovering next to the TARDIS, one hand stroking the side of the ship in that frighteningly precious way _he_ does. Closing her eyes, she sighs deeply, her lips moving in a murmur as she presses her forehead against the side of the box. She's _communicating_ with the TARDIS, he realizes fondly, as best as a human can, anyway, and it floors him less than he would have thought: they did take to each other in a very particular way, after all, Rose and his ship. Must have done - she did let Rose look into her heart unscathed, after all. 

He hesitates from a distance, watching her quiet moment with the ship. A part of him, that same part that's always leaving her behind, considers running away, coming back when she's made her jump back over to the other side. It's obvious now, given the chance to take in her outfit, her hair, that in her timeline, she's still coming back from that other universe, still searching out that other him, all pinstripes and brown and rude. It's an accident, happy or not, that she's crossed paths with the wrong Doctor. 

Though, of course, true accidents are the rarest things in the world. 

She doesn't know yet that he's left her on a beach with some half-cocked version of himself, and the guilt he feels every time he thinks of it makes him want to turn and run. Only it's _Rose_ , and even now, even in this body, two hundred years later, he'll never be able to resist the gravity of her. 

"She misses you," he says as he approaches. Her hand slips as she jumps in fright and turns to gaze at him with blown-out hazel eyes. Glancing up and down his figure once, then twice, she assesses him, eyes growing wider at what she finds. 

Ah, well then. This must be new for her. Timey-wimey, all right.

"Right," he says, "sorry. You haven't..." 

He trails off, barely meeting her eye as he clasps his hands behind his back. This part has always made him squirm, when he thinks she very well might run screaming off into the night. How did he get so dependent upon the approval of one tiny little pink and yellow human?

After a beat, she speaks, cautious, wondering. 

"...Doctor?"

"Yes, hello," he says softly. "Rose Tyler." Her name tumbles around in his mouth, stiff from lack of use. 

Her flabbergasted smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, but she takes a step forward even so, which he has to count as a win. 

"Can I...?" she doesn't quite ask, reaching out a shaky hand towards him - and, god, how could she ever think she needs to ask?

"Whatever you like," he says sincerely, the most sincere he's been in a good, long while. Her hand reaches further, nearly ghosting his shoulder before she hesitates, peering into his eyes as she bites her bottom lip. 

"Won't cause a paradox or nothin'?" she asks. 

"None. No need to worry."

And then - _and then!_ \- she's touching him, her hand warm on his shoulder the way only a human hand can be, sliding up to run through his hair, cup his cheek. His eyes involuntarily close at the contact as he drinks in the pleasure of her touch. Only when he hand drifts down, a whisper over his finger tips, do his yes snap open again, trained on her face.

"You're so...different," she breathes, a giggle passing between her lips. He slides his hand fully into hers, giving it a squeeze.

"Not so different," he promises. "New face, same man."

"Right," says Rose, smiling wider still. "Heard that one before."

Her tongue pokes out between her teeth, and there's nothing more he'd like to do than shove her into the TARDIS for eternity. Timelines be damned. Why, after all, should his past selves get so much of her, when he gets nothing at all? After the year he's had, he deserves a reward. 

Except. Except he could have. He could have not left her on that beach, all those years ago. He could still have her, snuggled in the TARDIS, running from planet to planet, drunk on her laughter. He made that choice, and as much as he'd like to blame it on that _other_ him, the volatile one, that man is him, somewhere. He's still the same man who loves her and won't keep her, even now. 

_You raging moron,_ says the voice in his head that always suspiciously sounds like Donna. 

"You should get going," he says finally, thumb brushing across her hand. "Universe to save and all."

The smile she offers is dampened but true. 

"Do I ever see you again? I mean _this_ you?"

If it were River here instead of Rose, he'd throw "Spoilers" in her face and saunter off, cool as day. But he gives this to her because she deserves it, because she deserves everything she asks for, and she won't get it, in the end. 

"I believe your exact words were, 'You'll never be able to get rid of me,'" he assures her with a small smile. "Til next time, Rose Tyler."

His last sight of her before she disappears is a flash of that brilliant grin. 


	3. i see your face in every star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose meets Thirteen.

Intermittently, he sees her in his bowed incarnation, often popping up at odd times just for a wave and a hug before scurrying off back to do her duty. The Doctor wonders, each time, at the stubborn mysteriousness of the universe. She’s not usually so benevolent, sending him a gift like that.

Every time Rose’s blonde hair disappears from view, he’s certain it’s the last time.

His next regeneration leaves him older, crabbier, an echo of the shell she found him in when he’d grabbed her hand in the basement of Henrik’s and told her to run. He doesn’t see much of her those years, but then it’s possible he’s avoiding her, nervous about what her reaction might be to his much-less-pretty face.

There is once, however, once when Clara tells him about an odd, intense girl with golden hair who was staring at the TARDIS like looking at it might turn it into something else.

He just shrugs and mutters something vague about human nature, unwilling to give up this extra time with Rose by alerting anyone else to her presence. Most days, he wagers this must be some big, cosmic mistake. To name it might beckon a reckoning from the universe, and he’s not sure he’d survive that.

He’s not sure he’ll survive it when she stops coming around.

He’s not sure he even wants to.

—

Rather suddenly, he’s all _yellow_ and _feminine_ and changing ‘he’ for ‘she,’ and she’s aware she looks a bit like Rose, thank you very much. It’s sort of embarrassing how much time she spends looking in the mirror - and, well, to be fair, she is a bit pretty - studying the way her hair looks under the light. Something about being a woman feels so satisfyingly right. Perhaps if she concentrates next time around, she can keep her form female. It’s a nice change of pace, somehow takes the edge off the overwhelming sadness she’s been consumed by as a man.

She runs into Rose when the fam is off in Sheffield for the weekend. Runs into her rather literally, coming out of the TARDIS as Rose is rushing towards it. Abruptly, they both stop, and Rose jumps back in surprise.

“Oh!” she says. “Hi.” Chewing her bottom lip, she frowns. “I’m lookin' for the Doctor.”

The Doctor blinks once, mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out as Rose looks at her expectantly. She hadn’t thought of how this might go, how much Rose might not care for her in her female form, and even the thought of that constricts her hearts.

Clearing her throat, she says dumbly, “Right.”

The silence between them resumes as the Doctor tries to find precisely the right words to make this all okay. Rose’s frown deepens.

“Well, where is he then?”

“Ah…”

As the moment drags, the Doctor nearly sputtering half-formed words, recognition dawns on Rose’s face, a blush blooming slow across her cheeks. Rather nice blush, that, the Doctor always thought. She’d been distracted by it many a time when they travelled together - well, _he_ had been distracted by it, she supposes, but it’s rather inevitable that she will be too.

“You’re - “ Rose gasps. “You’re… Doctor?!”

The Doctor smiles, wiggling her fingers in a wave. “Hello.”

Rose lets out a bellow of a laugh, full and bright and freer than she’s been since, well, since Canary Wharf, really. The Rose who laughs now appears years younger than the Doctor remembers her looking when the stars were going out, years younger than any of the times their paths have crossed since. Tears prick her eyes, and she wipes them away as she laughter subsides.

“My God,” she says finally. “Look at you! Bet that was a bit of a shock.”

The Doctor shrugs, grinning. “A good one.”

“Yeah,” says Rose, eying her up and down. The Doctor preens a bit at the attention. “You stole my haircut.”

“I - well, I - “

Rose laughs again. “’S all right, Doctor. I’m just taking the mick. You - you look really good.”

Breathing becomes infinitely harder as Rose’s words hit her. Impressing Rose has always been something of a priority for her. She once regenerated into precisely the type of man Rose would fall arse over ankles for, and she’d do it again in a heartbeat if she could. But there’s a secret kind of pleasure in knowing Rose might very well like any body of hers.

“Listen,” she says finally, “would you like to go for some chips?”

It’s impulsive and terribly irresponsible - fate of the universe and all that - but this body seems to feel the fate of the universe less heavily on its shoulders. Sometimes, she even wonders if her past regenerations weren’t a bit melodramatic for all their lamenting. Once she’d burned up a sun just to say goodbye; she wonders if she might do quite a bit more than that now to get Rose Tyler back, given the choice.

Chips, really, is the least she can do.

“Dunno,” says Rose, still grinning. “You gonna buy this time?”

“Still no money on me,” the Doctor returns, shrugging.

“Forever a cheap date, you are,” says Rose, lacing their fingers together and dragging her towards the road. The Doctor never takes her eyes off of her face.

“Forever,” she echoes, as they rush off towards the chippy.


	4. does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You silly human,” she hums. “Course I’m not mad. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to live your life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, look, I'm on a roll this week! have another chapter on me.

She gets decidedly more reckless after that, doing everything she can in her power to prolong her visits with Rose. They never travel too far, and never on the TARDIS - the Doctor knows her driving skills aren’t good enough to ensure she won’t get them stuck somewhere impossible and ruin the past entirely - but she delays her former companion for hours at a time, sitting in the chippy or the park or sat up against the TARDIS, reminiscing.

Increasingly, she drifts back to London 2009, knowing that Rose is most likely to pop up along that year. After the fifth time this happens, Fred, her most recent companion (an English student who observes the universe with a kind of wonder that makes the Doctor’s hearts play a symphony), furrows her brow and says, “You must really like the early 2000s.”

The Doctor looks up sharply from the console, where she’s just stuck the landing. “What?”

“Well, whenever we need to refuel, we end up here,” explains Fred. “Is fuel from 2009 the only kind the TARDIS can take?”

“It’s not exactly fuel like you’re thinking of,” the Doctor says automatically, deflecting. “It’s not petrol, like a common car.”

“Well whatever it is, 2009 must have a lot of it,” says Fred with a smile, and the Doctor knows she doesn’t mean anything by it, knows that the girl’s just curious, but it strikes a chord in the Doctor anyway. The chord that always shuts her down.

“There’s no reason,” she snaps quickly. “We could go anywhere. 2020, perhaps? Horrible year, mind you. Worst year for humanity in a good, long while.”

“No, it’s fine,” says Fred, frowning. “I was just… We can stay here.”

“Really, if you’d like to go elsewhere…”

“No. Doctor, it’s fine. This is fine.”

A tense beat unfolds between them, Fred on the jump seat fiddling with her notebook and the Doctor, at the console, fiddling with a few of the gears. They’ve yet to have a fight, her and Fred, and she doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the face Fred makes when she’s trying her best not to cry, doesn’t like how much she wants to erase everything bad from this girl’s life, from the lives of every human she’s every loved. Doesn’t like that she can’t, most of all.

 _This is madness_ , she thinks, this compulsive need she has to keep coming back to Rose. Best to put an end to it, to abandon this period in earth’s history. It’s not even a very good period of history, anyway; leaving it behind is the only sane course of action.

But later, after Fred’s gone to sleep and the Doctor slips out of the TARDIS for some fresh air, she sees a flash of blonde and a tongue-touched smile down the street, and she remembers she was never very sane to begin with.

—

“…and they were the cupcakes! All the aliens had transformed into cupcakes!” Rose cackles, a wide grin splitting across her face as the Doctor throws her head back in a laugh. She’s regenerated again - still a woman, this time with a dark shock of hair and a rather sardonic sense of humor -and today marks the twentieth time she’s run into Rose Tyler after leaving her in a parallel universe.

“Did they taste good, at least?” she asks. Rose raises an eyebrow mischievously.

“You’d have to ask Mickey that one,” she says, squeezing the Doctor’s hand.

This is, she realizes, laid out in a field near where the TARDIS is parked, a sort of adventure she’s never had before. Not with River, not with any of his other companions, not even with Rose, really, back before when they were always out adventuring. Rose’s voice drifts over her in a wave, and the Doctor imagines herself a kind of shore, the place this pink and yellow girl keeps coming back to, pulled by some force even she doesn’t dare try to understand. She’s happy, she realizes, just lying here, with no where to run to - or from.

This is the slow path, the closest she’ll ever get anyway, lying under the stars as Rose regales her with stories of her life. About working at Torchwood and moving into her own flat and finally getting her A-levels. About Tony’s third birthday party and her mate Nina who works at the coffee shop around the corner and knows _nothing_ about aliens but always seems to attract trouble anyway.

“Ah, that’s why you’re friends,” the Doctor teases her, grinning. “Miss Jeopardy Friendly.”

“Oh, please,” Rose says, shoving her arm lightly. “’S why you kept me ‘round.”

“Only partly,” she answers, truthfully as she can manage. “I like trouble.”

“Don’t I know it,” Rose says, turning towards the Doctor. She frowns as she gazes into her eyes, chewing on her bottom lip in that nervous habit of hers. The action sends a jolt down the Doctor’s body, from the top of her head to the ends of her toes, ultimately curling in her gut.

“You aren’t mad?”

The question throws her. She is, of course, mad quite often about anything she can muster the energy to be mad about. Losing companions, rules that serve no purpose, the very existence of pears. When the girl at her side disappears in the next twenty minutes, she’ll be mad about that, furious that the universe does things only by halves. _You can be happy, but only for a moment._

But here, now, sitting with Rose in this field, the sky alight with stars? All that anger appears as a stranger to her.

“Mad about what?” she asks finally, running a thumb over her knuckles.

“About…me,” she says. “Not - not waitin’ for you. Just…livin’ my life.”

The Doctor can’t help it; she laughs, full and loud, and then leans over to kiss Rose on the forehead to soothe the worry lines there.

“You silly human,” she hums. “Course I’m not mad. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to live your life.”

Rose smiles, a sadness creeping into the edge of her eyes. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Guess we’ve always had different ideas about that.”

It’s such a sudden shift in tone that the Doctor almost wants to do an autopsy on the conversation to figure out where she went wrong. Back when she lived on the TARDIS, Rose used to get in moods like this sometimes, usually when that brown pinstriped idiot was running hot and cold on her. Kissing Madame du Pompadour then sleeping in Rose’s room. Telling her he’s lost without her, then inviting along Mickey as a buffer.

“About you living your life?” the Doctor asks, going for nonchalant. As she’d guessed, it doesn’t work.

“‘bout _how_ I should live my life,” responds Rose, eyes fierce as they snap to the Doctor’s. “You - you were always tryin’ to get rid of me, when we travelled together.”

The Doctor sits up and reaches out for her shoulders. “Rose, no,” she says, urgently. “I never wanted to get rid of you. I swear. I wanted to keep you with me, forever. But you have to know, you have to understand, everything I ever did was to keep you safe because that was my one priority above all else. I will always keep you safe and happy, even if it means I sacrifice my own safety and happiness.”

She cups Rose’s cheek as she ends her little speech, willing the girl to understand. Rose allows the contact even as her eyes fill with a terrible kind of knowing.

“Doctor,” she murmurs, “sometimes you talk like…like you’re tryin’ to make up for something.”

The Doctor doesn’t answer, not out loud; instead she cautiously reaches out to wrap Rose in an embrace. Her favorite human’s arms come up around her back, fisting in her jacket - leather, again - and the Doctor buries her face in Rose’s neck, breathing in her scent, like if she grounds herself enough in this moment it’ll never end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For context, the dark-haired lady Doctor is based on Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Fred is Letitia Wright.


	5. i could lie, say i like it like that

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor runs into an old friend, and Rose asks an important question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forever furious that the Doctor just straight up never mentions Donna cause...she was so important to him. So here's a bit of that for you.

They’re strolling down Carnaby Street in early 2010 when it happens. He’s a man again, young, with smooth, dark skin, a meandering grounded-ness, and a sudden love of denim everything. It’s early days for her in their crossed timelines, a fact he picks up from her hesitance around him. Several times, he catches her biting her lip and staring at him with wide eyes, like if she looks away, he might disappear.

He’s not prepared when it happens. There’s no way he could be, but that doesn’t lessen the sting of it when Donna Noble, chatting loudly into her mobile phone, checks him with her shoulder as they round the corner. Time stretches out as they both jump back from the unexpected contact, and Donna halts her conversation mid-sentence, gazing at him with narrowed eyes, like she’s trying to place his face in her memory and can’t.

 _No_ , he thinks desperately, and he doesn't know who he's pleading with. _Please no._

The moment passes, and she shakes her head, face righting itself into an annoyed grimace.

“Oi,” she snaps lightly. “Watch where you’re goin’, mate.”

“Sorry,” says the Doctor hastily, and she’s off, scurrying down the street, barking into her phone once again. He stamps down the temptation to watch her go, instead grabbing Rose by the arm to hurry her down the street. She looks back after Donna, eyes wide with confusion.

“Hold on,” she says, grinding them to a halt. “Wasn’t that - ?”

“Wasn’t that what?” he snaps, avoiding her eyes. Rose frowns at him.

“Donna Noble. She's traveled with you,” she says slowly. “UNIT’s got files on you, you know, keeping track of your companions. Easier to find them than you, so I wormed my way in there to get all the latest information on you when I end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or right place at the wrong time,” she adds in a murmur, brow furrowed.

Looking back at him, she asks, “You didn’t want to say hello?”

A wave of fresh pain crashes over the Doctor’s hearts, pain he’s managed to keep at bay for centuries. Avoiding Donna, for the most part, has been easy, far easier than avoiding Rose or the temptation to go insert himself in her timeline before she met his big-eared, leather-jacket-wearing self. And it’s not because he wants to avoid her, really; Donna, in many ways, was his soul mate; she’d understood him in a way no one else ever had, and he was all the better for being around her. Which made staying away from her an absolute necessity. He could handle the pain of screwing with his own timelines. He couldn’t handle the thought of killing Donna Noble.

All of this must read on his face - or perhaps she’s just particularly adept at speaking Doctor - because Rose’s eyes fill with understanding. And, then, of course, tears.

“Or you can’t,” she murmurs. The Doctor doesn’t reply as he finally looks her in the eye, and she reaches out to grab his hand, lacing her fingers with his tenderly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. He squeezes her hand as the pain ebbs minutely, evidence of the one thing he’s always believed above all else: you can get through anything with a hand to hold. Especially if that hand is connected to Rose Tyler.

“Hey,” he says, with a slight smile. “That’s my line.”

—

Half an hour later, they approach the TARDIS, and Rose pulls out her teleport device, fiddling with it as she stalls their good-bye. He leans back against the doors of the TARDIS, watching her chew on her bottom lip anxiously.

“Doctor, I was thinkin’…” she says. “Could you take me?”

“What?” he asks with a frown. “Take you where?”

“To him,” she says. “To you. You before. The you I’m tryin’ to find.”

Ah, of course. He’d considered it, of course, reluctantly, whether he should simply drop her where she needs to be, the right place at the right time, as it were, and he had to admit, just secretly to himself, that he was relieved to realize he couldn’t do it if he wanted to preserve the timeline of that particular adventure as it was meant to be.

(He’s also considered how easy it would be to show up and eliminate a certain Dalek before it could cause his near-regeneration and consequent meta-crisis, but it’s one of those impossible thoughts, one of those paradox-inducing daydreams he saves for his darkest moments.)

“No,” he says finally. “There’s things you have to do on your own first that I can’t help with. Strictly-Rose-Tyler territory, as it were.”

Rose nods like she expected that answer.

“But if you could,” she asks, “would you?”

“Of course,” he says easily, and he sees it in the flash of her eyes, how she knows it’s not the first lie he’s told her and how it won’t be the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This particular Doctor is played by Alfred Enoch.


	6. i don't want anybody else touching you like i do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Rose,” he breathes, nose brushing hers. “I lo - “

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't describe him, but this Doctor is James McAvoy in my head.

Time hurtles on as it only knows how to. Companions come and go, and Rose continues to pop up like the most welcome sort of ghost. Trouble finds them sometimes, and he claims it’s because she’s still rather jeopardy-friendly, to which she counters she’s not the only one. They spend quite a few afternoons stopping more minor alien invasions, and he finds himself laughing in ways he hasn’t since he was all lanky and brown.

She always did that to him, didn’t she?

Something bubbles up in his chest each time they part, threatening to spill over with increasing urgency. Something so human, it twists in his gut, like the admission of it might change his very DNA. Something he’s felt for centuries, likely since he took her hand in the basement of Henrik’s all those years ago, or at the very least since she murmured, “There’s me.” Something he’s stopped himself from saying so many times, because the universe is cruel and sadistic and enjoys ripping the things away that he most cherishes.

But, he thinks, leaning back against the TARDIS, Rose pressed up against him as they giggle about the aliens they’ve just sent home packing, what’s the point in stopping himself now? Against all odds, she returns to him, a boomerang spread across his lives. Why deny himself the pleasure of speaking the words aloud.

His hand ghosts her cheeks as his laughter subsides, and she catches onto his change of tone, eyes flickering down to his lips as she wets her own.

“Rose,” he breathes, nose brushing hers. “I lo - “

Her lips stop his speech, warm, soft, and pliant against his. For a short while, they move, needy, that way, mouths opening to each other, hands hovering uncertainly at waists. His hearts go still as the feeling sweeps through him.

She breaks the kiss first, stepping back slightly, and he wants to follow the blush that tracks down her neck.

“Don’t,” she says, biting her lip. “Don’t - don’t say it. I want hear it from him first.”

 _Him_ , right. _Him_. That brown-suited bastard who left her - _leaves_ her - on a beach in Norway - and she wants to hear it from _him_. No wonder the universe insists on punishing him, colossal arse that he is.

Rose continues on. “Sorry. I - I know, _same man_ ,” she says hurriedly. “It’s silly, really. It’s just, the first time, I want us to be…synced up, right?”

“What makes you so sure he’ll say it?” he asks, neutral as he can muster. Rose’s eyes don’t even falter as she looks at him.

“Just do,” she says. When he frowns, she bites her lip, launching into an explanation.

“It’s just,” she says. “It’s like this, Doctor. My mate Shireen, right? She fancied this bloke, and she was crazy about him, only she didn’t know how he felt about her, so she kept it a secret for _months_ , and she tried to act all unaffected when he came ‘round. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop the way her face lit up whenever he walked it the room. She _glowed_ , I swear, cause she just loved him so much. She couldn’t stop it.”

With a sad smile, Rose looks back at him. His hearts thud loudly in his ears as he waits for her point.

“’S how you look at me, Doctor,” she says, softly. “Like you’re looking at someone you…”

She trails off with a shrug, glancing away with a slight blush blooming in her cheeks. He longs to reassure her, tell her, of course, she’s correct and always has been - and also clarify that love pales in comparison to the actual depth of his feeling for her.

He wants to tell her how if he could, he’d break their atoms down and meld them into the same star, just so they could spend eternity intermingled. Even that would be a shockingly inadequate amount of time for them to spend together, he wants to say; if she’d never been lost to battle against the Daleks, he would have done everything in his power to stretch her life out as long as possible - two hundred, three hundred years, with future technology - and that is why he had to leave her on the beach with that other version of himself. The longer she’d stayed with him, the more impossible it would have been to go on without her, and he would have gone too far too stop it.

But he doesn’t say that. Instead, he asks, “Rose, exactly how many times do we meet like this?”

She just grins, tongue peaking out between her lips.


	7. get lost and then get found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very distressed Rose runs into the Doctor - quite literally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It only gets worse from here, but then it ends...sort of well??? I promise after this I'll write a happy, fluffy piece of nonsense. 
> 
> For context: this Doctor is Andrew Scott; the crabby old woman Doctor is Emma Thompson; and Margot is Emilia Clarke.

He gains regenerations, and he loses them, and he gains them again, and it’s all very confusing, keeping track of the numbers - but! He’s trying to be better this time around (dark hair, brown eyes, a quirky sort of charm he’s fairly certain is rather sexy) about explaining regeneration to his companions. The last time it had _not_ gone well, when Audra had born witness to his total transformation, and their parting had been, well, awkward to say the least. Of course, that might have also had to do with the fact that she’d just lost her sister to an alien planet. But changing his face certainly didn’t help.

A mistake he vows not to make with Margot. Margot, who he met at a very posh garden party when she helped him prove that her own grandmother had long ago been replaced by a Janx that was hoping to harvest human bodies. Margot, who he suspects doesn’t realize how clever she is and who also happens to be _blonde_.

Well, no matter. It won’t be a problem.

“So!” he says, as he lands the TARDIS back down in good old London. “Regeneration.”

“Right,” says Margot. “It’s like alien plastic surgery.”

“What? No,” he says quickly, opening the door to let her out first. “Well, yes, sort of actually. But it’s more complicated than tha - “

He never gets to finish his sentence because as soon as he’s stepped outside, he’s bombarded by another body slamming into his. Margot jumps back in surprise then whirls on his assailant, crying, “Get off of him!”

The Doctor finally manages to right himself, and when he looks down at the pile of human in his arms, it’s Rose, clinging to him for dear life, which…doesn’t bode well.

It’s been a few years for him, this time. She’d barely showed her face during his last regeneration, which admittedly he thought was good, considering what a crabby old woman he’d been. But she wasn’t experiencing any of this in the same order. Wherever she came from last was likely his future. A future that made Rose Tyler cry.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around her. “You’re okay.”

It’s the wrong thing to say because her sobs get louder. To his left, Margot anxiously shifts on her feet.

“I’m all right, Margot,” he tells her, but she continues to watch intensely, her gaze calculating out the story between them. “Perhaps we should go into the TARDIS for a cuppa, hm?”

Rose shoots away from him at that, still on her knees but wiping at her eyes furiously.

“No!” she says. “I can’t - I - I have to get back to you. I have to stop wasting time - I - “

“You’re not wasting time,” he snaps, angrier than he has a right to be, considering where she’s headed.

Rose softens at his outburst, wiping her eyes one last time and scooting closer to him.

“Course not. ’S not what I meant. I just…” She trails off, eyes filling with fresh tears.

“Rose,” he says, low. “What happened?”

There’s little he imagines could induce such a reaction in Rose, steady and brave as she has always been. The little of it he can imagine doesn’t thrill him to think about.

She just shakes her head.

“Sorry, Doctor,” she murmurs. “Gotta bear this one alone.”

“Rose -“

“Just,” she says, fingers on his lips to stop him. “Tell me I find you. Tell me it’ll all be fine.”

Her hand cups his cheek, and he holds it there. “You find me,” he says, unable to bring himself to repeat the second part, which, he knows, doesn’t go unnoticed. Still, she kisses him after that, soft and brief, and he wants to melt her body into his, audience be damned.

“Okay,” she says quietly, pulling away to stand up. Once on her feet, she seems to finally notice Margot. “Oh! Hi,” she says. “I’m Rose.”

“Margot,” the other girl returns.

“Nice to meet you,” she says. Gesturing at the Doctor, she adds, “Keep him in line, yeah?”

“I’ll do my best.”

With a nod and a final smile, Rose is off again, down the street and around the corner to disappear. Once she’s gone, Margot offers the Doctor a hand up.

“Thanks,” he says, brushing off his trousers. “Erm, that was…”

“Your wacky space girlfriend who’s stuck in a different part of your linear timeline?” she supplies with a smile.

“Er - yeah,” the Doctor answers, ever delighted by Margot’s particular brand of casual astuteness. “Exactly that.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night, so I watched about a dozen episodes of that soap from Falcor IV, _Through Space and Time_ ” she explains. “And that was the exact plot. Bit cliche, but…she’s cute. Rose. Does she?”

“Does she what?”

“Find you.”

The Doctor cringes at that. “Yes.”

Margot frowns at him. “Why the face? It’s not a happy ending?”

He offers her a sad smile. “I don’t get much in the way of happy endings, Margot. Mostly thrilling middles for me.”

He holds out a hand for her to take, and she does, readily, because she trusts him with her life, even now. Briefly, he wonders how she might leave him one day, by choice, accident, or, heavens forbid, death.

(It’s been too much death, recently.)

Lightly, she squeezes his hand, prompting him to look at her. “I’m sorry,” she says, eyes trained to his.

“It’s not your fault,” he assures her.

“No,” she replies, “but that’s not really what people mean when they say they’re sorry, is it?”

She smiles wistfully as they head off down the street, hand in hand, and the Doctor remembers why he keeps coming back to humans, over and over, even if he can never keep any of them.


	8. slower, slower, we don't have time for that

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Doctor,” she says urgently. “What’s happened? Did you crash?”
> 
> “No,” he says dumbly, and then, “Yes. Doesn’t matter.”
> 
> “Yes it does,” she insists.

The TARDIS spins and spins, crashing to earth with an unpleasant groan, lights going out at the landing. The Doctor picks himself up from the grating gingerly, ignoring the way he’d rather prefer to stay there for the rest of his regenerations.

Can’t be too many now, can it?

As he sits up, he catches sight of a book that’s landed a few feet away, falling from its place on the jump seat. The last thing Margot was reading - some book on the basics of quantum mechanics because, she’d said, she wanted to understand him when he talked - and he picks it up gingerly, trying not to think about how she’ll never get the opportunity to finish it now.

He wonders if you can regenerate from a broken heart, but he supposes he’s tested that theory one too many times for it to prove correct.

The TARDIS door flies open behind him as he cradles the book in his arms, and he knows who it is before he looks up because it’s always her these days. He’s lost track of the number of times they’ve crossed paths, but it must be a least fifty at this point.

Rose is beside him before he can even greet her.

“Doctor,” she says urgently. “What’s happened? Did you crash?”

“No,” he says dumbly, and then, “Yes. Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does,” she insists. “You hurt?”

He gazes up at her, so alive and whole and _there_ , somehow still there after all this time, and he can’t stop himself. He reaches out to crush her to him, grip to hard around her shoulders, but she hugs back just as fiercely.

“Rose,” he murmurs into her hair, and she presses impossibly closer to him.

He needs this, needs her, here, forever, stuck in the TARDIS with him until the universe burns itself out, but he can’t have that, can’t keep her. Pushing away the tears threatening at the corner of his eyes, he kisses her instead, a rude, rough thing that can’t possibly feel very pleasant. She pushes him away firmly, her hands framing his face as she searches his eyes for something.

After an age, her lips press against his once again, urgent but soft, her mouth opening against his as his tongue reaches out to explore her.

It’s her moan that signals him to pull her to his feet, turning them so he can press her against the console, slotting a thigh between her legs. She pants his name against his ear, hands gripping at his shoulders, and he teases the skin just underneath the edge of her shirt.

This isn’t how this is supposed to go, he’s fairly certain, shoved up against the TARDIS. (His ship won’t appreciate it, no matter her affection for Rose or himself, and he’ll get an earful later.) In the end, they don’t even get their clothes off; she comes, rutting against him, one of his hands up her shirt and one gripping her hip, and he’s powerless to stop himself from following right after her.

Her ragged breathing slows as she leans her head back, eyes closed, hips still caging him in close to her. Gently, he traces a hand down her abdomen.

“Sorry,” he whispers into her neck, and she laughs breathlessly.

“For what?” she asks, tugging at the hair at the nape of his neck until he pulls back and looks up at her. “A really good orgasm?”

His cheeks heat up at her brazen admission, and he buries his head in her neck again, biting lightly at the skin just above her collarbone. She sighs, threading her fingers through his hair more firmly.

“Was it?” he can’t resist asking. She giggles.

“Shut up,” she says. “‘Course it was.”

He just nods, arms curling around her in a hug that’s more like a melting into her. She’s entirely solid, like this, not the half-figment of his imagination that he usually envisions her. He could steal her away, if he wanted to, the way he did the first time, the way he stole the TARDIS.

At least, that’s what he likes to tell himself. He likes to imagine he’s the type of man who would laugh in the face of the past, ruin a Very Important Timeline just because he can, even as he knows it’s a lie. Time has always had more control over him than he likes to admit, and he couldn’t take that kind of risk when he can’t know what would happen to Rose if her timeline goes un-threaded.

This way, at least he gets a part of her.

He can’t keep himself from the make-believe, though, so, kissing her neck, he says, “Stay.”

Rose runs her hand through his hair once more. “Okay,” she responds softly, and the Doctor wonders when she began lying to him so easily.


	9. goddamn turn around now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What happens,” she asks, tears starting to spill over onto her cheeks, “if I stay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Doctor is inspired by Richard Ayoade.

He gets into a long period of trouble, where everything just seems to go wrong for him. Loss rears its ugly head everywhere - losing wars, losing planets, losing companions. He starts traveling with Kat, who has an intense Irish brogue and has never looked at trouble she didn’t love. She seems to be exactly what he needs, for a time, with all her manic energy.

But that all comes crashing down, of course, when she gets herself in trouble in the form of an intergalactic war and never gets out.

He avoids going back to earth - avoids 2009 - because he doesn’t deserve the comfort of Rose’s arms. She’ll understand immediately when he breaks down, assure him he did nothing wrong, even though he’ll know it’s a lie. He can’t bear her sense of compassion when he craves penance, so instead he rushes around the larger universe, seeking out danger wherever he goes. It works, too, his rather un-clever plan; he burns through regenerations faster than he ever has before.

In the end, it’s the TARDIS who sets him straight.

He should have expected it, really. She’d been bugging him for weeks, chiding him in his mind as he stumbled his way through a Time Lord equivalent of a bender. When her pleas go unbidden, she simply ignores his attempts to land on Clom - sure to be trouble there - and deposits him on earth, early 2010.

He trips on his way out of the TARDIS and nearly lands right in the very arms he was hoping to avoid.

Not quite, of course, because his current body is new and quite a bit clumsy (all limbs, huge hair, and glasses). Instead, he lands in a heap at her feet, gazing up at her like a mortal before a god. She might be one, too, with the way the sun illuminates her from behind, giving her a sort of halo.

“What’s happened?” she asks immediately, bending down to his level. “You look awful.”

“Why, thank you,” he says, teasing. “I thought you might like this body.”

She doesn’t take the bait, instead brushing his hair from his forehead to study the gash there, her mouth curled into a scowl that he wants to smooth away.

“Why haven’t you healed yourself?” she demands.

“Pft, too much effort,” he says airily. “I think it makes me look rather manly, don’t you?”

Rose pulls her hand away from his face, still frowning. “It makes you look like you have a death wish,” she says, darkly. He sobers at that.

“Does sound nice, that,” he says, low, looking past her shoulder at some invisible thing. “Starting to think I’ve lived long enough.”

He expects a harsh rebuke; the Rose of old would have smacked him for talking that way, would have told him how important he was to her, how he wasn’t allowed to just abandon herself or the universe that way. But that Rose had eyes like the sunrise, eyes that hadn’t learned to be tired yet.

She studies him with tired eyes now.

“You travellin’ with anybody?” she asks, getting down to business. He shrugs, and she rolls her eyes. “No wonder. You’re rubbish alone.” Hopping to her feet, she holds out a hand for him to take. “C’mon, up you get.”

He lets her pull him up and laces his fingers through hers before she can pull away. “Where are we going?”

“Into the TARDIS.”

“Oh, good,” he says, sending her a loopy smile. His sense of balance is off, and he nearly trips as they cross the threshold of his ship, almost toppling them both. He tries to remember the last time he slept. Ages ago, if his current state is any indication.

Rose doesn’t say much as she helps him to his room, conveniently just around the corner from the console room thanks to the TARDIS. She settles him in bed, tucking him in like he’s a little boy, even going so far as to kiss him on the forehead.

“Go to sleep, now,” she commands. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

The Doctor squirms half-heartedly, even as sleep falls heavy on his eyelids. “Don’t go,” he begs, a whimper he’ll be embarrassed about later, when he has the energy.

For a brief moment, he wonders if she’s already left, but then her fingers lace through his, and she sighs, “I'm not going anywhere.”

It takes him three-point-five seconds to fall asleep.

-

Six hours later - an age for him to sleep all in one go - he wakes with a sudden jolt, sitting up to find Rose gone.

Well, he supposes, it’s to be expected. He made a rather big fool of himself, didn’t he?

Hurling himself out of bed, he heads off towards the galley - only stopping short in the hallway when he finds the door to her old room open and her hovering at the precipice. Cautiously, he approaches her.

“It’s still here,” she says in wonder, sensing his presence. “It’s exactly the same.”

“You stayed,” he replies, his wonder equal to hers. Rose glances at him over her shoulder, a small smile on her face.

“Yeah, well, what’s six more hours?” she says, and the Doctor vaguely recalls the time she waited five and a half hours for him on a space station just outside 18th century France.

 _Probably not the best time to bring that up_ , he thinks, and the silence stretches between them. He wonders where she is in her own timeline, recalling the last time he ran into her, the sounds she made when he pressed her up against the console. A very significant part of him wants to hear those sounds again, though a louder part doesn’t know how to ask.

In the end, she speaks first.

“I’m gettin close,” she murmurs, chewing on her thumbnail, “to findin'...to findin' you, I think.”

Ah. Right. Finding _him_ , finding that other Doctor, the one he’s come to think of as the enemy in his mind. Is it insanity to be jealous of one’s past self? Sometimes the man who first loved her seems like a total stranger to him.

( _But, no_ , he corrects, _not the first. Not quite the first._ )

He nods, face as neutrally blank as he can manage. “Good,” he says. “That’s good.”

Rose’s eyes shine as she finally dares eye contact with him.

“I wish - “ she says, her voice breaking on the word. “I wish I could stay.”

His eyes bore into hers fiercely. It takes everything in this power to maintain the distance between them; closing that distance is a natural recipe for disaster. World-ending disaster. Reality bomb disaster.

“Can’t you?” he asks, voice harsh. “You could. You could stay.”

Rose’s eyes fill with a sadness he finds unreasonable on anyone so young. They’re like a mirror of his own eyes, filled with the weight of the universe. It’s a look he’s given her - a look he’s given to so many of his companions, but mostly to her - time and time again, a look he hoped never to see on her face.

“What happens,” she asks, tears starting to spill over onto her cheeks, “if I stay?”

 _Terrible things._ He knows that’s the right answer, the one she’s expecting. Terrible things like the universe being ripped apart, but what is the universe to the loss of Rose Tyler? He wants to say, _I get to keep you, that’s what happens._

Instead, he smiles. “Oh the usual. End of the world.”

Rose snorts, a messy sound through her tears. Stepping forward, she rises up on her toes to plant a solid kiss on his forehead. His hands grip her waist like a lifeline, but she extracts herself from him before he can escalate it any further.

“Be seein’ you, Doctor,” she says, bright and hopeful even as her tears stream down her face anew. He doesn’t bother to save face by wiping away his own.

“Not if I see you first,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there! One more to go, and then a little epilogue...


	10. what if this storm ends, and i don’t see you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And our final Doctor is played, of course, by Idris Elba.

Blood drips at his feet as he stumbles towards the TARDIS, feet unsteady beneath him and one hand pressed against the gash at his side. His ship sets off alarm bells in his head when he finally manages to pass through the door and lie down on the grating. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he mutters, running a hand over his face.

Taking a deep breath, he concentrates on calling up his regeneration energy. It’s a pity, really; he hasn’t been in this body very long, and it’s a good one, if he might say so himself. Tall and rather handsome, with some of the rough energy his ninth incarnation had and a thick London accent.

His side aches, and he concentrates harder on forcing himself to regenerate, His wound is too severe to simply heal, so regeneration it is, excellent body aside.

No matter how hard he tries, the regeneration doesn’t come.

His hearts pound furiously, and he sits up as best he can manage. _This can’t be it_ , he thinks wildly, wracking his brain to count the lives he’s had in the last century. Certainly there must be one or two left for him to draw upon, but -

The TARDIS whines desperately, confirmation of his fear. He’s made it, somehow, finally, to his final regeneration. All those years, all those do-overs, and here he is, at the end of the line like he never imagined he’d be.

Grunting, he pushes himself up to the console, patting the coral he passes.

“Sorry, old girl,” he murmurs. “Thought I had more time.”

The blood from his wound grows increasingly more concerning against his hand; he tries to calculate how long he’s got left, but his mental faculties are failing him even now. Clumsily, he sets the coordinates on the TARDIS, hoping she understands his final request.

“Please,” he says, flipping the final switch to send him where he wants to go. The TARDIS lurches, and he falls backwards, darkness overtaking him.

—

“Doctor,” a voice says, urgent, hands shaking his shoulders. His eyes resent opening, but when they do, he’s greeted with precisely the sight he most hoped to see - the sight he’s always hoped most to see, everywhere and everywhen in the universe.

“Rose Tyler,” he slurs, trying to reach out to touch her. His hand barely moves an inch before flopping back down to his side; he chuckles helplessly.

“You’ve got to regenerate, Doctor,” she says quickly. “Your wound looks really bad. Come on.”

“Can’t,” he coughs out. Rose frowns at him.

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’?” 

“All out,” he explains, forcing the words out past his useless lips. “No more regenerations left.”

Tears spring to Rose’s eyes as she comprehends what he’s trying to say, and she grips his forearm tightly. “No,” she whispers. “No, you _can’t_.”

“Can,” he argues back. “Will. Must.” He’s making less and less sense as the seconds pass, and Rose’s tears stream down her face even as she shakes her head, as though simply her wishing might fix all this. Well, it did once, didn’t it?   


The pain in his side has numbed, muscles in his body relaxing to the point of no feeling. A few minutes longer, he reckons, concentrating the last remains of his energy on brushing his pinky finger along the side of Rose’s hand. She presses their hands more firmly together. 

“To die will be an awfully big adventure,” he quotes with a small smile, and her sobs echo throughout the halls of the TARDIS. 

“Please,” she cries, fingers curled into his palm. “Please.”

“You’re here,” he murmurs in amazement, grinning. “Rose Tyler. How long are you gonna stay with me?”

She pulls his hand up to press a kiss against his knuckles. “Forever,” she promises, nearly choking on the word.

“Forever,” he repeats, eyes trained on her face as his song ends for the last time. 


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose figures it all out.

He’d never realized how sticky human beings were. Well, of course, he’d realized in an abstract, factual way, considering all their unmanageable body fluids and hormones. Experiencing it himself is a whole other beast, though, and it’s fascinating, the sweaty feeling of his palms as he sits across from Rose Tyler - Rose Tyler! - in a little hotel room in Norway.

The sweaty palms aren’t a constant, he wagers, considering his conjecture that they might be connected to the furious beat of his single heart at breakneck speed as he studies her solemn face. She’s been far too quiet since they left the beach, a kind of quiet that’s unusual for her - or at least it _was_ unusual. It’s been some time since they traveled together; it’s highly likely she’s changed quite a bit, since people tend to do that.

He would know, wouldn’t he?

Her brow is furrowed in concentration, like she’s trying to work something out - and that’s no good, no good at all. Rose is clever, far cleverer than she’s ever given herself credit for, likely, and sooner or later, she’ll realize just exactly how bad of a deal she got, being left on this beach with the likes of him. No TARDIS, no Time Lord, just him with his terrible, single heart.

She’ll want to go back, he’s fairly sure, and he knows Rose well enough to know he won’t be able to stop her. There’s no use fighting the inevitable.

Clearing his throat, he says, “I can get you back.” He scratches the back of his neck, considering. “ _Wellll_ , I can _try_ to get you back. Fairly clever, me, so I should probably be able to work it out. Course, might cause some problems, but nothing we won’t be able to fix!”

He sends her his best bright smile, but Rose’s frown only deepens, morphing into the sort of look that tells him he’s speaking absolute nonsense.

“What are you on about?” she asks.

He sighs. “You want to go back to him, don’t you? The - the other one. The... the first one,” he says, unable to name his counterpart as the real Doctor. He’s just as real, _thank you very much_ , if slightly less impressive.

“I totally understand,” he blunders on breezily. “You spent quite a bit of time looking for him and then you got left on a beach, and it wasn’t really your decision, was it? Not really fair, that, just dumped here. And with no TARDIS! So if you want to go back...”

When he looks back at her, Rose’s frown has disappeared, replaced by something lost.

“You don’t want me,” she says, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “God, I can’t believe I thought - “

Quickly, the Doctor reaches out and grabs her forearms, forcing her to look at him. “Rose, no,” he says. “I want you. Of course, I want you. But... he wants you too, even if he’s rubbish at saying it.”

Rose chews on her lower lip at the admission, eyes flicking between his as she studies his face. “I can’t,” she says finally, gently pulling from his grasp. “I mean, I wouldn’t, but...I can’t.”

“Right,” the Doctor says, nodding. Then, with a frown, he says, “Wait, sorry, why can’t you exactly?”

Her frown returns, and she sighs, running a hand through her hair as she scoots back on the bed to lean up against the wall. He wants to follow, to press his thigh up against hers and feel the vibrations of her voice along his skin, but he hasn’t been invited. This, at least, should be her choice, even if nothing else is.

“I think it might...cause a paradox or something, if I did,” she admits, chewing on her lip again, a distracting enough action that he nearly misses what she says.

“Wait, what?”

Rose grins at him, not the usual Rose Tyler grin of old, all tongue between teeth, but a tiny, rueful thing, one that tells him she’s pleased to have him around.

Well, it’s a start.

“Look,” she says, going into teacher mode. “Remember how I told you about the dimension cannon, yeah? And I was jumping between universes trying to find you?”

“Right. Brilliant, that. Wildly irresponsible, mind, but absolutely brilliant.”

“Well, we used my TARDIS key to sort of latch onto her so we could increase my chances of findin’ you,” she explains. “Only I’d end up in the wrong universe or wrong time period or something. And then this other thing started happenin’ where... I found you.”

“You mean before the Dalek,” the Doctor supplies, but Rose shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “I found you. Or, I guess, him. The Doctor, later. I kept...running into you. Him. All his future regenerations. I must have run into every one, I reckon, by the time I got onto the right track.”

The Doctor sits up straighter, a shiver running up his back. “You _spoke_ to him?”

“More than,” returns Rose. “Sometimes a lot more than,” she adds under her breath, a blush creeping into her cheeks. The Doctor scoffs.

“Rose Tyler!” he crows with a grin. “Huh. Quite an odd feeling, to be jealous of one’s self.”

Rose grins at him, looking a little more her usual self, before frowning again. “It’s odd, though, right? At first I thought it was just a coincidence, or not even a coincidence, really, just sort of a hazard of the job, you know? But now it’s like...” She trails off, staring out at nothing as if deducting something, and the Doctor grins.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, scooting closer.

“It feels like it was sort of on purpose,” Rose finally says, picking at the bedsheet with her right hand. “Like I was meant to find you - find him, all those times. Like something...”

With a start, she leaps up from the bed, pacing about as she works out the answer in her head. He scoots down the the edge of the bed, setting his feet an the floor as she follows her movements.

“Rose?” he prompts, and she turns to him.

“Bad Wolf!” she cries. The Doctor’s heart skips a beat, a strange Pavlovian response he’ll likely never rid himself of.

“Bad Wolf?” he repeats. “What’s that got to do with it?”

Rose grins, delighting in figuring something out when he hasn’t. “The beach, Doctor, Bad Wolf Bay. I can’t believe I missed it - it was right there! See, at first, I used to think, after the first time we said goodbye, that it was just some cruel joke of the universe, that it was sort of mocking me, you know? But I was wrong about that. It wasn’t a joke. Of course!”

The Doctor frowns. “Blimey, is this how I sound when I can’t get to the point?” Off Rose’s glare, he grins sheepishly. “Sorry. Rude. Continue.”

Clearing her throat, Rose continued, “As I was saying, it wasn’t a joke. Cause Bad Wolf, that was always my signal to myself that I could get back to you. That I at least had to try. So I should have known on that beach that I was gonna find you again. That I’d get back to you somehow.”

The Doctor beams at her. “Oh, Rose, that’s brilliant!”

She rolls her eyes. “No, you don’t get it,” she says. “See, I promised you forever, right? But we both knew it wasn’t really possible cause... I’m human; our forevers were never gonna match up. If I’d stayed with you, you would have had to watch me die or somethin' eventually. You would have had to live without me. But then I got stuck here, and I had to use the dimension cannon to jump across universes, which meant I just kept coming back to you. I mean, I must’ve run into you a hundred times, Doctor. I was even there when you -“

She cuts off, tears in her eyes, and the Doctor reaches out a hand for her to take, breathing a sigh of relief when she does. Wiping at her eyes, she continues, “I was there when you died. When he died. For real, I mean. I was there.”

He tugs her towards him, heart constricting. “Oh, Rose, I’m sorry,” he whispers. She leans foreword, pressing her forehead against his.

“‘S okay,” she says. Pulling back, she bites her lip, explaining, “I think... I think I did this. When I looked into the heart of the TARDIS, what did I say? Something about seeing all of time and space, yeah? And I think - I think that must’ve been it.”

“Been what?”

“When I fixed it so it always happened like this,” Rose breathes out in a rush, her fingers tracing his cheek, and he leans into the touch. “I saw a way that you could keep me - just a bit of me - and I think I worked it all out. Cause now... I get you for my forever, and he gets me for his.”

She gazes down at him, eyes glazed over, and his heart just might burst with the implication of her words. He wasn’t lying when he said he and that other Doctor were the same, and their sameness gives him particular insight into how impossible it would be for either of them to continue on without the presence of Rose Tyler.

But by some grace of the universe - or perhaps simply by the stubbornness of the young woman in front of him - neither of them have to.

“Rose Tyler,” he murmurs, arms circling her waist as he pulls her closer. It’s a bold move, but considering what she’s just told him, he thinks odds of reciprocation are good. “I’m so glad I met you.”

She presses her lips against his in a hard, brief kiss.

“How long are you gonna say with me?” she teases him, smiling.

“Forever,” he promises, and, finally, finally, it’s the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Officially done! Wow, I have never been so good at getting a fic done. Notoriously bad at that, me. 
> 
> Now perhaps to go write something a bit fluffier...


End file.
